Page 2 - Australian Pork Newspaper

Pig Industry Calendar of Events
2018
DEC 5 – The Pork Show, Quebec City, Canada www.leporcshow.com/en
DEC 11 – Stock Up - Keeping pigs on small farms FREE webinar with Dr Trish Holyoake 8-9pm www.eventbrite. com.au/e/stock-up-keeping-pigs-on- small-farms-webinar
2019
JAN 8 - 10 – Banff Pork Seminar, Banff, Canada www.banffpork.ca
MAR 9 - 12 – 50th AASV Annual Meeting, Florida, US www.aasv.org/ annmtg
MAY 19 - 21 – ONE19 Conference, Lexington, US www.one.alltech.com
JUN 5 - 7 – World Pork Expo, Iowa, US www.worldpork.org
JUN 12-13 – Australian Biosecurity Symposium, Gold Coast QLD www. biosym.com.au
AUG 25 - 28 – Asian Pig Veterinary Society Congress, Buscan, South Korea www.apvs2019.com/invit.html
NOV 17 - 20 – Australian Pig Science Association Conference, Adelaide SA www.apsa.asn.au
How to supply event details: Send all details to Australian Pork Newspaper, PO Box 387, Cleveland, Qld 4163, call 07 3286 1833 fax: 07 3821 2637, email: ben@porknews.com.au
porknews.com.au
07 3286 1833
IN mid-November, the first Australian Vet- erinary Antimicrobial Stewardship Conference was held on the Sunshine Coast, Queensland.
The purpose of this conference was to pro- vide Australian veterinary stakeholders the opportu- nity to contribute to, and learn about the growing number of veterinary an- timicrobial stewardship initiatives under way in Australia.
The conference was pur- posely scheduled during World A ntibiotic Aware- ness Week 2018, which aims to promote the appro- priate use of antibiotics to contribute to the avoidance of further emergence and spread of antimicrobial re- sistance.
The World Health Or- ganization has described antibiotic resistance as one of the greatest threats to human and animal health, as well as food and agri- culture.
In 2015, the Australian Government Department of Health and the Depart- ment of Agriculture and Water Resources released Australia’s first National Antimicrobial Resistance Strategy covering the 2015-2019 period.
This document provides a framework for AMS activities in the human health, veterinary and en- vironmental sectors, with an overall goal to mini- mise the development and spread of AMR to ensure the continued availability of effective antimicrobi- als for use in humans and animals.
So, what is meant by the term ‘antimicrobial stew- ardship’?
Prof Luca Guarda- bassi, who presented at the AVAMS conference, defined antimicrobial stewardship as “the mul- tifaceted and dynamic ap- proaches required to sus- tain the clinical efficacy of antimicrobials by opti- mising drug use, choice, dosing, duration and route of administration while minimising the emergence of resistance and other ad- verse effects”.
Stewardship plans there- fore need to be tailored to individual herds and farms – and require collaborative efforts between producers and their veterinarians to minimise animal health and welfare challenges.
The Australian pork in-
by HEATHER CHANNON Acting Research and Innovation General Manager
dustry has been practising antimicrobial stewardship for several decades with support from pig veteri- narians.
An integrated approach to herd health manage- ment is supported by many pig veterinarians as antimicrobials alone will not improve animal health without keeping a strong focus on other contributing factors.
Good biosecurity, animal husbandry and nutritional management practices on farm reduce the need for routine use of antimicro- bials.
Details of the antimicro- bial stewardship practices, both current and historic, in the pork, poultry, red meat and dairy industries can be found in the newly released publication fund- ed by DAWR and Austral- ian Eggs.
The report can be found on the Animal Health Aus- tralia website.
It describes the ‘5R framework’ for AMS – namely responsibil- ity, review, reduce, refine, replace – and how these principles are being ap- plied to pork.
AMS plans have already been voluntarily adopted by a number of producers and integrated into their standard business opera- tions.
APL is working to devel- op an industry-wide AMS plan to encourage the wid- er industry to undertake similar endeavours.
This is being supported through the use (and on- going development, where required) of diagnostic assays to confirm disease treatments, increased use of vaccines (including au- togenous vaccines) and the implementation of alterna- tive treatment options.
Australia’s Chief Vet- erinary Officer Dr Mark Schipp and Chief Medi- cal Officer Prof Brendan Murphy attended the
AVAMS Conference and each discussed some per- tinent points in their key- note speeches.
Dr Schipp highlighted that the contribution of food to antimicrobial re- sistance in the human pop- ulation is not known, and that this is due to either a lack of data on antimicro- bial usage or this data is not being collated.
This is not just an issue for the pork industry – it extends across the Aus- tralian livestock sector (as well as in many other countries).
This is important, given the majority of antimi- crobials globally are used in the animal (both food animal and companion animal) sector and some countries are already test- ing imported food prod- ucts for AMR.
Importantly, Australia has had a conservative approach to the use of antibiotics in livestock production, which has meant usage levels are lower than other countries, but evidence is needed for both usage and resistance in companion, food and performance animals to determine the correlation between use and resist- ance.
There are tools available that are being, or could be, used to monitor antibiotic usage in individual herds, including the antibiotic us- age calculator developed by Dr Pat Mitchell with sup-
port from the Pork CRC. At an industry level, how granular national level da- ta on antibiotics approved for use in the pork industry could be collected and col- lated, who would manage it and how and to whom it would be reported are key questions that require
further discussion.
This is needed so the
Australian pork industry can work together to ad- dress these information gaps and also proactively use this data to support market access opportuni- ties, meet domestic and international trade re- quirements and address consumer concerns.
In relation to antimi- crobial resistance sur- veillance, Australian Pork Limited is leading a DAWR Rural R&D for Profit project in collabo- ration with AgriFutures Australia (Chicken Meat), Murdoch University, Uni- versity of Adelaide, NSW Department of Primary Industries, Thermo Fisher Australia, Illumina and Tecan, which is focused on developing cost-effective robotic laboratory proto- cols to measure the AMR status of faecal commen- sal bacteria in individual herds and establish an AMR index to support surveillance, testing and/ or monitoring activities.
This work is just start- ing and we look forward to reporting our progress with you.
Furthermore, the Veteri- nary Prescribing Guide- lines for Pigs being devel- oped through the Austral- ian Veterinary Association in partnership with Ani- mal Medicines Australia, with support from APL, are due to be released in December 2018.
Additionally, Dr Jac- queline Norris from the University of Sydney dis- cussed the development of an online Veterinary An- timicrobial Stewardship
training program to assist veterinarians to reduce and rationalise their use of antimicrobial agents in clinical practice.
This work was initiated by DAWR and veterinary schools in both Australia and New Zealand to im- prove the stewardship of antimicrobial drugs by graduated veterinarians.
This training pro- gram will be released in late-2018/early-2019.
On the human health front, Prof Murphy in- formed conference del- egates that every Austral- ian hospital has an AMS plan, which is audited for compliance.
In contrast, general prac- tices, which account for 80 percent of prescriptions for antibiotic use in humans, do not have an AMS plan in place.
Prof Murphy stated bar- riers for adoption of AMS by general practitioners include time pressures, consumer pressure and the fear of ‘missing’ an impor- tant disease.
Interestingly, Medicare data is being used by the Department of Health to compare the highest prescribers with others in a similar geographi- cal region, with letters then being sent from the CMO’s office to the top 20 percent of antibiotic prescribers – a significant reduction in prescribing from these practitioners was then observed.
Overall, it seems behav- ioural change is needed to translate strategy into action.
Finally, I would like to take this opportunity to wish you all a safe and happy Christmas and all the best for 2019.
For further informa- tion on any of the topics discussed, please do not hesitate to contact me on 0423 056 045 or heather. channon@australianpork. com.au
Antimicrobial stewardship – what’s happening
SUMMER is upon us! Are you ready?
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Page 2 – Australian Pork Newspaper, December 2018 www.porknews.com.au
Mixing in Melbourne – the big and the small
☛ from P1
to continue to do every- thing we can to improve demand for Australian pork.
Second, continuous improvement is our aim regarding the qual- ity and timeliness of information provided to
industry around where supply is going.
And third, we need to continually look back- wards and remember what happens when sup- ply and demand get out of kilter.
This will be my last article for 2018 so I’d like to wish all the read-
ers and in particular Australian pig farmers a great festive season and a brilliant start to the new year.
Let’s have our fingers crossed 2019 brings a to- tally different business dynamic for the success of the Australian pork industry.